Mass Deflect
by Alex Mcpherson
Summary: Hi. I'm Alex. Thanks to ST First Contact type events I got abducted by aliens. And I'm glad. I mean, I'm in Mass Effect. I got to moon Sovereign and flip off Harbinger. And the lot of us know what's coming. So we cheat too. Self-Insert. Angst-light.
1. Taken

**Taken**

Tap tap tap, away I went writing some more fanfic for one of my favourite franchises.

Oh, hi. I'm Stephen, I'll be your Self Insert character this evening. Today. This Morning. Whatever. And this is a Mass Effect Self Insert. So, I arrived on Eden Prime or the Citadel just as the game was getting underway, or up to a maximum of two years before it was to start... right? And I'm, what, going to be shipped with Tali or Ashley, agonise over the Virmire choice, and generally angst over the whole 'shepard's going to die' stuff... right?

Nope. I'm not going to do that.

Hell, it wasn't until... well, after the abduction that I began to think I was in an SI story. And that was a long time before the game actually began.

You see, I arrived pretty much... 8 years before the first game. Give or take a few months. No, not arrived. I arrived long before, but I was in stasis. I _woke_. Anyway.

How did I get there? Well, that's the start of the story.

From the beginning.

-MD-

Unknown Location, Unknown Time.

A tall alien with four eyes, what would later be recognised as an evolutionary ancestral relative to the Protheans (sort of like humans and apes) looked up from his computer console, and nodded at his commander, a very militaristic looking man of a different race altogether.

In an alien language, that for writing purposes is English and yes I'm just going to skip over the 'his lips are moving to English words not that alien language' trope that is absent in Japanese films (because those are dubbed over)... anyway. He spoke. "Take us into the Portal."

-MD-

Earth Orbit. 2014.

In space, the great hulking Alien-movie reject slid into a high orbit, and a small shuttle left from the belly of the beast.

Within, the pilot nodded to the Prothean-evolutionary-uncle who was looking at a portable computer display, ignoring the rough ride of a fast entry into a planet's atmosphere, and the pilot too, so the nod was completely pointless as the pilot realised, and huffed in annoyance. "Where are we landing this time, Javiviromalunitunes?" The pilot finally asked, as the craft slowed down to what the humans would say was about mach 7 at 50,000 feet, and the rough ride smoothed out.

"I have already sent the coordinates for the next batch to the nav computer, dickhead." Jav responded. Insult translated to nearest earth equivalent.

"Right. Ask a good question, get a stiff-ass response." Was the nearest translation for the pilots' response.

"My name is not Javiviromalunitunes."

"Huh?"

"My name is Javivaromanulitoonas."

"Same thing." The pilot muttered too low to be heard. "Too bloody long."

After a five-minute transit time resulting in the pilot wondering who the hell sat this flight path – considering he was just following the nav computer directions since launch – finally they arrived in a well-developed island's local airspace.

"Engaging Invisibility Field Generator." The Pilot reported to hide from the various planes that were in the air. "It would seem these primitives have Radar technology and Aerodynamic lifting techniques." What he said in the alien language, was a lot cruder, and so this is not verbatim right now. The pilot doesn't like us 'primitives'. "How..." insult edited out.

"Set it down at location two. Location One has been... built over since our last visit." Jav' said. Then he turned to a bunch of gun-carrying walking tanks. "Engage Personal Invisibility fields, and watch where you move. We don't want a repeat of the so-called Roswell Incident. 'Grey' Was pissed at being held captive for five months. And you are all too dangerous to get pissed at the natives this time."

The pilot winced. He'd been a youngster when that visit happened, and the second ever visit to this planet had gone awry because 'grey', one of the Union's foremost xenobiologists had forgot to cloak his personal entry module. And that visit resulted in quite a few local breakthroughs in biology and technology. Grey had gotten bored of their terrible TV, and on further visits, sent telepathic signals to key inventors. Now he was retired on the planets' island named 'Hawaii', and gleefully supplying long-distance technical support to this 'NASA' group, in exchange for free copies of new TV Shows. Last that the pilot knew, this... 'Paul'... liked to fake being held prisoner by one of the governments every so often and had fun at 'scifi conventions', whatever those were. Hell, his last trip here when he'd caught up with 'Paul', he'd heard a tale from him about two blokes that kept being mistaken for being lovers that tried to help him 'home'. Of course Paul was just yanking their chain, and the Government got two reliable people out of the deal.

"Coming in to land."

Around them, they saw the low rooftops of only two-story buildings. The long legs of the landing gears kept the bulk of the ship above human head height, and the pads themselves shifted to where people would just bump into them. But thankfully, it was night time and they knew the humans were not naturally nocturnal, so they could go about their business.

Jav and his team quickly left, and under invisibility fields, swept through the small area for 'specimens'. In other words, humans and whatever small animals they could find.

"I have an awake specimen on my scanners, Javivaromanulitoonas." Reported one of the grunts in the way only soldiers with no sense of humour can.

"Good. Capture this one. Nocturnal Specimens are hard to come by."

-MD-

In my room.

Tap tap. Oh, hi there. I see you were focused on somewhere else.

So there I was, typing away, writing fanfic on my computer up in my bedroom. You know enough to realise that I was the 'awake specimen'. Let me tell the story, don't go getting ahead of yourselves.

As I added a twist to the story I was writing, and thought it wasn't all that well done, I backtracked only to pause at an odd sound.

A bunch of noises from outside made me look out the window, but I couldn't see anything that could have made it, not in the dark low-light of a badly-lit street.

I frowned at the sound of the front door opening, and all but rushed on light feet to the stairs and looked down. Thankfully, I'd had bass-heavy music playing that could disguise the light thumping of my feet on the landing. I snuck a peek, half-lying down, and saw nothing from the front door. It was shut, and there weren't any noises.

I padded lightly down the stairs, and in the dark I slowly moved into the living room. Quiet.

I shrugged and went to get a drink, when I heard it.

Breathing.

I almost closed my eyes to make it easier to find, but then that would be a sign I heard it.

I moved closer to the kitchen, when I felt it.

My knee came up and I used it to spin me around, and a quick hop and I kicked out with my right foot, landing solidly and painfully on something... invisible.

"What the hell..."

I ran quickly to my bedroom, and heard the laughter from several places. Either that was because they liked my sudden fear, or they laughed at how I'd knocked down an invisible opponent.

I quickly reached beneath my stash of Mass Effect books and grabbed a long metal shaft pipe.

And... nothing.

-MD-

Jav looked around the bedroom of this, specimen. "This is a Mass Relay." He muttered in confusion, and looked at the computer. He was glad he'd learned the primary language of the majority of the planet (by location rather than populous), English.

The computer was, crude, but he quickly learned to navigate it, and brought up an open application called 'Opera' that showed something called the 'Mass Effect Wiki'. He looked for an option to turn the computer off without losing the valuable data – he doubted that the thing carried a battery, as the computer itself was too big to move easily.

Then he looked around, and ignored the group of grunts that picked up the unconscious human, for the various items within.

He didn't know what TV, or Games were. Only that they were 'entertainment' mediums. Thanks to 'Paul', one 'program' was required watching before being assigned to study these primitives. A Programme that the humans liked to watch, called 'Blue Planet'.

So to Jav, all programmes were fact. His people, an isolationist group that had been forcefully added to the Jinani Union, kept to themselves and were rather oblivious to some concepts like creating fiction. But his race were not naturally-evolved, they'd been created by another unknown race to be thinkers of science. Reality was their 'Entertainment'.

So looking at the shelves of what he quickly recognised as Optical Storage Media, labels such as 'Stargate' and 'Terminator' prompted him to order a grunt to pack it all up to move out.

Combined with the computer that had showed a historical document being written, Jav was convinced this person was some kind of Historian or Scientist. He turned to the large poster on a wall showing a map of a galaxy, with various dots and bits of rope between pins. Labels under each pin gave the human names of those locations, and on the rope between those locations were what Jav recognised as the local time system.

He quickly put two and two together, and realised that the specimen he'd just abducted had been creating a map of the galaxy, specifically a map of the Mass Relays.

Then a picture, instead of a written label, caught his eye. It was the Centre.

Only, it's indicated location did not match what he knew of the galaxy's mass relay network. Quickly matching the map and his own knowledge of the relay network, he realised that the location was a nebula. The Centre was not there, it was in a different arm of the galaxy. And it was not in a nebula, but a star system with no planets but several asteroid belts. Curious.

"I want this room stripped bare." He ordered to a grunt. "And get this map down. Carefully! This... Human has a map more extensive than ours, and I would know it and why!"

-MD-

Hawaii.

A cloaked figure tilted his head toward the 'Roswell Grey' alien that was soaking up the sun in the open.

"Paul."

"Alex."

"Now I have to kick myself."

"Oh?"

"I thought that it was you that organized my kidnapping."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I mean... I had a link between you and Bioware. But when I got here to check it out, I mean, you know, confirm it. Nope. None. Nada."

"Yup. Not my doing." Paul agreed. "Just a coincidence I'm from that Universe." Paul gave the most innocent smile that the figure was convinced his initial thought was correct, despite lack of evidence.

"Sure. Sure."

-MD-

In Orbit

A massive vessel hiding under active and passive stealth systems watched as shuttle that should be invisible rose from the surface and all-to-soon docked with the hideous Alien-Reject.

"Captain, I have been using both active and passive sensors since I hacked into the main vessels' sensor suite to hide our presence, and I managed to get a biological scan of... the subject." A hologram spoke from her own 'control console' station of the ships' Combat Information Centre.

A Red-headed figure turned to the hologram, and nodded. "Have Doctor Michel compare it to his file."

"I already have. She reports that they must have done some substantial alterations to his body. His..."

"Yeah, he said he probably didn't have it before this point." The red-head agreed.

After a moment, the figure added, "I can confirm that the uploads to his computer were successful. The encrypted data..." the Hologram stopped short, and nodded simply.

"Of course." Red-head nodded again.

"Captain, do you read?" Came the voice that had, just before, been talking to Paul in Hawaii.

"I read you."

"Ready to return."

The Red-head turned to the hologram, and said, "Beam him up EDI."

The Hologram grinned, and in a voice and tone familiar to many on the planet below, "By your Command."

Several of the present people in the CIC paused at that, and one of them commented quietly, "Having seen that show..."

"... Yeah." Replied another, "That was just creepy."

-MD-

Unknown Location, Unknown Time.

Zorra was angry. No, she was furious.

"WHAT?"

The minion before her repeated, quieter. "The Nepotis group have been abducting natives from planet Earth." His name for the planet swapped for what we call it by the way. Their name translates more to 'The Horrible Blue Planet of Idiots that stole Paul from us'. Er, the paul bit replaced with the name that alien went by within the union, of course.

And yes, that is the more literal translation of the word they assigned to our planet shortly after 'Paul' emigrated.

"How long have they been doing so?" Zorra managed to ask with barely restrained anger.

"Twenty Standard cycles."

The minion rushed from the room as Zorra quickly unleashed her rage and massive sweeps of her telekinesis dented bulkheads and rendered less-sturdy materials to tiny chunks of debris.

"Have a ship ready to take me there!"

-MD-

Nepotis Vessel

Jav muttered to himself as he cross-referenced the various documents that had been stored on the machine, with hard-bound documents he'd ah, 'borrowed' from a library on Earth.

"This is ever more curious." He muttered to himself.

"Javivaromanulitoonas sir. Medical Technician Zg... The Chief Medical Technician would like your presence in the experimentation bay at your earliest convenience." A grunt reported, before disappearing, hoping not to be rebuked for forgoing using a formal name for a formal request. The grunt had only just managed to learn Jav's name, and Jav wasn't the most... vocal... or violent, about adherence to the use of his full name.

Jav sighed and stood slowly, the enigma that was Specimen Earth Historian-Scientist 228. Moments later, he was at the door, a large green coat indicating his high position in the group on his shoulders loosely. He walked while reading from a portable datapad in his hands. He knew where to go without looking, and he knew others avoided physical contact with him.

When he reached the experimentation bay, he looked up as Zghjskiri, the Medical Technician greeted him with an emotionless grunt.

"Yes, Zghjskiri?" He spoke, barely tripping on the name anymore, thanks to both learning to speak it properly and having genetic modifications so his body could produce the initial sound without problem.

"I have finished analysing this primitives' Genetic Structure. I do not believe he has the capacity for learning as much as you hinted at."

"How so?"

"He is a young one. Five Standard Cycles, maybe six. His Identification you recovered indicates he is Twenty-Six Earth Years old."

"Remember what we know of that planet, Zghjskiri. Their thought processes are structured different from ours."

"Yes... They don't even use Synaptic Processing Units." Skiri replied in fake disgust. "Even so, this one's brain structure should not indicate any particular ability for increased learning, compared to many of the smarter ones we have studied. One of my team did not a larger capacity for creative thought, however. And Neurological responses indicate greater memory when pleasure is involved."

"Curious. Creative Thought?" Jav asked.

"Yes, one of the technicians suggested that perhaps it means he came up with all the things you said he was writing."

"Pardon?"

"He wrote fiction." Skiri replied in mock-dryness.

Jav was frozen in thought. Fiction? No, there was much information there that matched what he knew of his home, even if particulars were different enough that he passed off as speculation on the human's part.

He dismissed the idea out of hand, and nodded. "So what are you going to do?"

"I require your authorisation for stimulating his neural synapses to promote more conventional scientific thinking. Also, our superiors wish to know if we can adapt the Synaptic Processors for Asadrei Biology. As human biology is very close but simpler, this may also be our opportunity to investigate, other... sources."

Jav nodded "You have my authorisation. And Go ahead with the implants. But I must ask why this one?"

"He is the first specimen one of our scientists decided to bring back functional." Skiri answered.

If Jav didn't know Skiri only faked emotions, being a synthesis of an organic person with synthetic technology and having lost the biochemical-side that was half the equation of emotions, he'd think that Skiri was being sarcastic.

As it is, Jav knew the truth. Most 'Specimens' that they brought back hadn't been treated well enough to be subject to the kind of experiments that Skiri was responsible for. The rest that were well enough, weren't used because of their other uses in experiments.

"Keep me informed." Jav spoke, and left simply.

-MD-

Zorra stalked the halls of the Nepotis Vessel, having arrived in secret. She'd been refused access less than five standard days ago – a long time. Finally she'd decided to screw protocol and hid aboard a supply ship that took... 'medical supplies' to the Nepotis group. She'd peeked at those supplies, and they were not the sort of thing that the shipment manifest suggested.

Finally, after taking over an hour to get there without being seen, she arrived at what was labelled as the 'specimen containment bay'.

Cages, were more like it.

She snuck in, and took a long look around the room.

And shuddered in suppressed horror. Many were dead, her mild empathic abilities were quick to show. A headcount compared to that sense, and she knew, there were a hundred bodies here, but only twenty were living.

And those that were, weren't. Not really.

She approached a mechanical hulk that vaguely resembled the shape of a human, but it was not.

"... Kill... me..." It whispered at her, and to her shock, she realised that she understood the words of English out of it's... speakers.

In her own language, she prayed as she charged her telekinesis for a powerful yet quiet blow. "May your gods free you of your burden, and release your soul to whatever afterlife your believe in."

And she slammed at it, and the full force of her charged telekinesis crumpled the... being... into nothing but metallic shards no larger than a strand of animal hair.

She looked up, and saw in the sea of dead bodies, the living ones were in similar states of being, even if not mechanical.

But thankfully, she knew as she looked into their eyes, it was not death that they wanted her to free them to. They were angry. And not at her, she was also quick to realise. "I am here to free you. Do not be afraid."

"There... Is... one... other..." She was slow to understand. Her linguistic processor implant required full input of what it was to translate, and so they were repeating it for the third time before she got the full message.

"They... experiment..."

A voice was quick to explain from the group, and again, though she heard English, she just knew that like the mechanical being she'd just killed, there was an implant in the speaker that allowed her to understand without having to translate on her end. "One of the kids they'd taken to experiment on, something about 'synaptic processors'. They thought he was some kind of historian or scientist. He's just a kid..."

She nodded at the figure that moved out slowly from the group, and she saw exactly why she understood him – an artificial voicebox on his neck.

Hoping he would understand, she spoke in turn, "Could you take me there?"

He shook his head, and she gathered from her empathy it was not the affirmative it meant to her culture.

Then she realised he had not been walking, but moving in a wheeled chair, and was missing legs.

Her eyes turned black. "I shall get him out of here. Most of you can move?"

Nods came, and she felt that that was the affirmative, rather than the negative. It was... odd. But she thought on it only for a moment, and she continued, "There is a ship docked to the airlock down the large hall."

"We will be noticed."

She just gave a chilling look. "These bastards experimented on sentient beings. They shall have no mercy from me. They will not notice your escape once I make my move."

They nodded in realisation, and the one who she could understand easily spoke again. "Good luck. And be careful, they have... energy weapons... that can vaporise in one shot."

She knew that, and nodded her head at him, only just remembering to do his affirmative nod, not her own affirmative shake.

She turned and left.

In her hands, she began charging up her telekinesis again.

-MD-

Jav Frowned at the data that was not cooperating.

"Computer. Analysis of data encryption."

"Working. Encryption pattern not recognised. Insufficient Data."

"Protocol Rei Jok Twelve. Analyse Data encryption."

"Working. Analysis complete. Insufficient Data."

"Insufficient Data? Explain."

"Analysis under Protocol Rei Jok indicates encrypted data is not complete."

Jav leant back, and almost growled. This was maddening.

Suddenly, however, a massive explosion tore his attention away from the problem, and he turned in shock to see a massive psionic wave dissipate not far from him, and as he rose from his chair he realised that there were odd piles of dust on the floor in the empty room that had, a moment ago, had twelve of his colleagues working on their own projects.

What he saw next put a halt to his thought of what caused it... along with a halt to his existence.

-MD-

Zghjskiri finished speaking to his sponsor on the image, when the sound of an explosion from another room interrupted.

"What was that?" his sponsor asked.

"Just an experiment." He replied with a fake sigh, as if this was a common occurrence that rankled at him. "You may go ahead with the Genetic re-sequencing of the Asadrei. Combined with their latent psionic abilities, there is much potential for them to evolve to higher sentients."

He'd barely stopped speaking when another explosion came, this time it rocked his room a little.

"Of course. I shall let you back to... your projects." The sponsor said with a heavy dose of sarcasm, then cut the connection.

With that Skiri stood up and moved to investigate, and for a moment, he felt shock, and felt curiosity at feeling shock, as down the hall was a Psionically berserking Zorra of the Union, turning several of the grunts that were rushing in to piles of dust with overcharged telekinetic bursts, ripping them apart at the cellular level.

And that was when the alarm sounded.

Zorra noticed him, and for a moment, Skiri was shocked to feel fear, and he froze.

Zorra smiled... and this made him feel a chill, even though his sensors did not show a temperature deviation.

And then she raised a psionically-charged hand just behind her head, and then flung something at him.

And he was not shocked to not feel anything. Anything at all.

-MD-

_Initialization complete._

What the?

Pzzzz OWW!

I sat up, and realised that I was, first... naked. And second, covered in wires.

Oh, and there's an alien lady covered in goo looking at me. Odd piles of dust near her. And she looked like she was breathing heavily, and she half collapsed, grabbing a desk to hold herself up.

Yeah. What the fuck?

I looked around the room... and wished I didn't. Tools that I didn't know the use for were covered in blood. And I looked down, and sure enough, I had fresh scars, complete with sudden feeling from them.

"... Are... you.. okay...?"

I blinked up at Alien Lady.

"You speak English?" I asked.

She blinked in, shock I think.

"I'll take that as a yes."

I got up and began disconnecting the wires, and looked around for something to... ah hell, who am I kidding, I don't want to wear any of the lab coats I can see. She's already seen me naked.

And I began to mutter. "Of course she does. She's an Alien who's here to rescue me. That means she knows of what happened here, and that implies possible knowledge of where I came from. Since she speaks English, she knows."

I tilted my head as my thoughts slowed down. "Huh." I hummed, knowing that I came to that conclusion a bit quicker than I had any right to.

I shook it off as she stood up fully, and nodded hesitantly to me. "Come, we must leave this vessel."

I had to ask, "How far from my planet are we?"

She looked at me sadly, "I'm afraid that you and the others cannot return to your world, the portal to it closed shortly after you were brought here. We do not know what opened the portal, or what closed it."

I sighed at that, and I followed her out of the door.

I looked around as we moved slowly – she had noticed that too much activity would have affected me in a bad way – and noticed more piles of dust.

"Whats with the dust?"

"... that was your captors."

I turned to her in shock. "Okay... Can't say I'm not horrified by that but... Well, I'm grateful for the rescue all the same."

"And oddly clearheaded about it." She commented as we passed a lab.

I peeked in as I passed it, only to stop in shock.

She noticed and turned to me in curiousity.

"That's my stuff!"

She raised her eyebrows. Or whatever those things above her eyes was.

She looked in, and nodded, "Earth technology. Computers. Books." Then she looked, really looked at some of the stuff. "I was not aware that Earth knew of the Transit Network."

I blinked at her when she saw my map of the mass relay network. But I quickly turned in surprise when she moved in, and asked, "Since it's your stuff, I guess you'll want to... take. It." She blinked in surprise at several boxes of items around the room.

"That is a lot of stuff. They don't normally take this kind of thing though... on the other hand I didn't think they actually abducted people either..."

I noticed sure enough that, "It's all my stuff! And... my god they must have taken every DVD I had... what... and my books."

"Huh."

"What?"

I turned to her, and saw her reading something off a tablet of some sort. It looked similar to the Apple iPad, but not.

I moved closer, and quickly read what it said.

"Historical Documents?" I muttered, then looked at the screen that was showing one of my stories... and I began to laugh.

I was insane, I must be. An Alien had just abducted me and thought that my stories were historical documents.

It was too hilarious to be real.

It had to be.

"They're not historical documents?" Alien Lady asked.

"No, it's fiction. Stories."

She looked at me shrewdly, and at my Mass Effect books, but didn't comment beyond asking, "I can deal with anyone else here... but it will take time to get all your stuff to..."

She was cut off by an announcement

"Alert. Incoming hostile craft." The ship shuddered. "Defense Barriers holding."

The ship shuddered harder, and was followed with what felt like an actual explosion... followed by a sudden drop in airpressure, that halted just as suddenly.

"Defensive Barriers Down. Hull Breach Detected, emergency Bulkheads engaged."

Another shake, but this time it was... muted.

"Alert. Docked Vessel under fire." Another muted shake, then, "Docked Vessel destroyed. Airlock Breached. Emergency Bulkheads engaged."

"... But the others..." Alien Lady whispered.

I looked at her, and although I was concerned at what 'the others' meant, I asked, "Please tell me you haven't killed anyone in the command centre or bridge or whatever this ship has?"

She winced.

"Well, lets hope this works..." I thought for a bare second, then asked, "Computer, reroute power to defensive systems from engines and non-essential systems. Identify Hostile Vessel."

"Reroute complete." A shudder. "Barriers holding. Hostile craft reads as Qualoniun Military Attack Frigate." Another shudder. "Barriers Holding."

I looked to the Alien Lady, and asked, "Hostile to just these guys or, just hostile?"

"You mean, can we fight back?"

I nodded.

"Unfortunately not. The Qualoniun are a member of the Union. Ah... my people. They'll be attacking because they learned like I did about the abductions. But they're..."

"Yeah. I get that bit." I nod at her, and sigh. "Computer, how long can the ships defences hold off an all-out assault from the hostile vessel?"

"Two Kunis."

I looked at Alien Lady, "Er, what is that in Earth time?"

The computer responded. "Calculating... Two Kunis equals One point three 'Earth Hours'."

"Does this ship have escape pods?"

"Affirmative."

"Okay... uh... what's your name?"

"Zorra."

"Zorra. I'm Stephen. Lead the way to the pods if you please." I sighed.

-MD-

"Cargo storage?" I asked, looking at the back of the pod.

Zorra nodded. "I think we can fit your stuff in there." She looked at me, and I think she smiled at me.

"Not all of it. The hard drives, my xbox, and if I want my books I'll need to put only the discs themselves in, without the cases. This'll take an hour. Computer, remaining time, earth units?"

"One point one earth hour."

"This better be worth it." Zorra said.

"It's a lot of fiction, so its worth it to anyone fascinated by other cultures' ideas of entertainment, er... if that makes sense."

"... Yes, actually." She grinned then, and while it looked a bit, predatory, since she looked rather avian without feathers and her mouth was a bit pointy, but flesh instead of a beak, I grinned back.

-MD-

One hour Later...

"It'd be easier without constant shaking from that." I said.

As it was, I had only 'point two' earth hours left. A little extra there from shutting down life support to everything except the corridor between that lab and the escape pod I'll be using.

I put the last lot of discs in handy thin cylindrical containers into the cargo section of the pod, and winced as I hit my head on the side from another shudder.

I moved away, and Zorra placed the last of my books inside. Well, the last of the books I was going to take. Some I was going to leave. Particularly, a lot of the smaller books that I already had digital copies of on my computer. Most of those were Star Trek ones.

All that was left, was the xbox, and the hard drives from my computer. I had enough space for a few items, but... as it was It would take too long to return to the lab, choose what would fit and return with them. The trolley, well, makeshift trolley that we'd used to make two trips only had the drives and xbox left.

I put them in, and closed the hatch to it.

Then the explosions began again, even as I began inputting security measures.

"Barriers down to 67% Coverage. Alert, hull microfractures detected. Structural integrity compromised. Alert, Sensor systems offline. Alert, Barriers down to 32% coverage."

Zorra looked at me as I opened the pod, thinking that it would be big enough for two. The outside made it look big enough, afterall.

But when the sloped part of the pod opened, and I saw that it was very cramped... too cramped for Zorra alone unless she stripped her heavy armour off... which I reliased would take too long.

"You must get in... Stephen."

I blinked. "There's another just..."

"there is little time left. Get in. I stopped the monsters, that is all that matters to me now. Go."

I got in, and Zorra closed the lid. Through a small window I could see she gave me a sad look. I couldn't make out what she said.

And Then...

-MD-

In Space.

The Frigate finally stopped it's hour-long siege on the ship. Not because it ran out of ammo, nor because they realised they needed no more shots to cause the destruction. But because they were attacked.

Two beams of hot metal slammed into the ship, the immense mass ignoring powerful barriers, and the metal cut through the hull like it was made of tissue paper.

And that was all she wrote. It exploded before the tail of the beam even vanished into the ship.

And in the distance, the ship that had fired, was visible. Long, massive, and with several obvious gun turrets, Several massive engines on its hull and and eight more smaller ones mounted to large Cowls either side of the hull.

Just as it turned to the Nepotis vessel, an object was blasted from a section of hull, right before the ship exploded.

-MD-

"Dimensional Transition complete. Analysis indicates we have arrived precisely where and when we intended." EDI reported.

"Good. The ship?"

"Is being attacked. Curious, Scans indicate that the subject is near one of the Escape pods, with one other."

She read a report and nodded. "Alright. Lock on the other life sign. And target that ship shooting him."

"You wish to destroy it?"

"... Power up the Primary Thanix weapon, and fire when ready."

"We will be visible from the moment we fire." EDI reported, yet she didn't hesitate from saying so to, "Powering." Edi spoke, then less than a second later, reported, "Firing. Target destroyed. The Subject is in the Escape Pod."

"Beam aboard the other one."

"Done..."

She blinked, along with EDI at the visual of the ship exploding... and a cough from nearby.

She turned to the person that had coughed, who looked a little nostalgic at the screen, then at the Red-head. "I'll go greet Zorra. Boy is she in for a surprise."

They looked between each other.

"EDI, Ready the ship to transition dimensions again."

"What about our, passenger?"

"That's up to him."

-MD-

Unnoticed in the vastness of deep space an escape pod, inside of which there was a person in cryogenic stasis, tumbled end over end until it was swallowed by a vortex to disappear for a very long time.

Throughout the galaxy, civilizations rose and fell, rose and fell, and great machines came, harvested, destroyed and more until they left, and then a long time again passed with more civilizations rising and falling. This pattern repeated, until at the start of another cycle, the machines moved an object once more to a place near whom the machines knew would rise next. They placed the object next to a nebula, knowing that in time it would be discovered and used as they had intended. To become a seat of government. A capital of many races, as it had served as such so many times before. To be a safe haven. A Citadel.

But the machines did not count on the arrival of something from the distant past. On the fringes of the Tomaros System, a vortex appeared and spat out an escape pod, with it's lone occupant, asleep. It is the year 2071, and humans have yet to reach beyond their own star system.

And the nearby colony world occupied by the race called Asari detected this pod. But they have not yet identified it as an escape pod, only a very small asteroid or comet on a slow path through space. Why, it would take a hundred years to approach orbital distance of that colony world. A hundred years before they realise. A Hundred, before they recover it. And a hundred, before they open it. While inside, the sole... human, occupant, lay in wait.

-MD-

**A/N:** I notice that FFN likes to bloat the word-count. Word gave 6,000 words exactly for this chapter. And then FFN strips out all the scene breaks, and still says theres a hundred more? Pfft. And I had to edit them back in. Damnit. Otherwise it's just confusing.


	2. Lusia

**Lusia**

2175, Tomaros System, high orbit over Lusia.

In the black of space, a small work pod manned, well, womanned by an Asari began to spin.

It was there to recover something that had been travelling through space for a long time, something they had thought a comet or something naturally occurring. Not what it actually was.

Onboard, the Maiden that was stuck with this dizzying task pushed the pod forward, untrusting her own biotic abilities to just 'grab' the damn thing.

"Spin matched, trajectory matched. Extending Grapple."

An arm reached out and lengthened, beyond twice it's own length until it contacted with the pod and suddenly sprouted ropes, that wrapped around the pod.

"Captured. Reeling it in and reducing spin."

-MD-

Lusia, Monoi Eastern District, Monoi Science Directorate.

The Matriarch in charge strode in through the large doors to the area that had been cleared of everything before an artefact of some sort had been placed down.

At present, several maidens and matrons were working away on removing large layers of ice and collected matter. A nearby computer display showed a wireframe outline of the artefact within the ice.

"Matriarch." Greeted one of the scientists that was patiently waiting to take a sample to determine the artefacts' age.

"Is it Prothean?" She asked simply.

"Ah, no, ma'am. The design does not match known Prothean design."

She had a sudden thought, but... no. It didn't seem like _their_ style. _They_ liked to leave them on planets.

_But so did the Protheans_, something told her.

Either way, this was not the average artefact.

"How long until the artefact is exposed?"

One of the team working on just that, walked over and with a short greeted, answered her question. "Unfortunately, scans indicate that the artefact is rather fragile. We'll have to work slowly, layer by layer. We can't just... crack it open. Three days."

-MD-

Three earth weeks had passed, and two of them spent researching the artefact, before she returned.

She stared. It was not a beacon, or anything like _that_.

The technology was familiar, yet not.

It was a stasis pod. One designed for long-term stable storage of a living being.

They had discovered such pods of Prothean design many times before, but they had always lost power, and unfortunately the way those worked required power to maintain cryogenic stasis.

This was different.

The sides of the sloped stasis pod was open, with technicians working to attach various cables to the mechanisms and various technology contained in the bulk of the pod.

Unlike Prothean stasis pods, most of the internal volume was given to the technology, not to the occupant.

Because unlike Prothean technology, which used devices to maintain stasis without physical contact at any point, scanners had indicated that the internal volume given to it's occupant, and they were shocked to note that it was indeed occupied, was filled with a liquid that maintained a constant low temperature, and was highly oxygenated. Beyond that, they'd need a sample of the liquid, which would mean opening it.

And that was not all. The team had found that the pod injected something into the occupant's blood stream, and artificially lowered his or her heart rate. Sensors attached to the front of the pod monitored the occupants' vitals, and near as they could tell, he was in a deep state of hibernation. Low brain activity, very low heart beat, low internal body temperature.

The team finished connecting all the wires, and carefully probed the pod's computer systems for data, without triggering a revival process.

"Alright, I have a match on the programming to the Jenin Union."

"Who?" someone asks.

"A civilization that existed far before the Protheans." Someone else comments.

She blinked as she processed that a civilisation existed before the Protheans and... So far as she knew, there wasn't, another, one. But... well, _They_ existed. And with what they were, there had to be others.

She pushed those thoughts away, and soon enough someone handed her progress reports, and she left to ponder the mystery of this cryogenic stasis pod.

-MD-

Lideya, a Matron and lead scientist on this research team walked into the lowly-lit room that housed the pod. It was the middle of the Lusian night. With the long days, came the long nights. Twenty hours of darkness, with forty seven hours of daylight. Thanks to the distance from their sun, even in the middle of summer, the temperature in the capital city Monoi never rose above 25 degrees. But at night snow fell and the temperature plummeted to well below freezing.

Having evolved on Thessia, a planet with a warmer climate, and shorter days, even the Asari couldn't stay awake through a full Lusian day. Not without suffering sleep depravation symptoms, that is. And with a lower average surface temperature than most Asari colonies, life on Lusia was very different from the others.

Most of the planets population lived in massive Arcology complexes. Power for the entire Monoi city was drawn from a multitude of geothermal power stations buried below the surface well away from the city, the distance a safety measure. In the middle of winter, more inefficient methods were used, to purposely use the waste heat to keep the internal environments of the city warm. Food was grown in large artificial caverns with a controlled climate.

And Monoi was in the middle of a winter. The nights were 40 hours, the days twenty. Outside in the daytime, it was just below freezing. It was the only time that the hover cars could actually work, and so work patterns revolved around the night time. Normally, the middle of a Lusian Winters' night would have the place bustling, but today was a weekend. A Concept recently stolen from the Humans.

Most of the scientists had returned home during the day, most living in smaller population centres far from Monoi.

Only a couple remained. The Matriarch, and herself.

Lideya slowly made her way to one of the desks covered in pads and paper, and put down one of the pads she brought in.

She had come in wearing earphones, listening to some music she liked, and hadn't paid much attention to her surroundings. So when she pulled them off and turned to the pod, intent on checking the computer systems attached to it, to make sure that it was still downloading from the pod's data storage system, it was a shock to see someone in flowing robes and a large cowl turned in her direction, one gloved hand on the computer controls, manipulating the controls with startling ease, given that the person couldn't see it, turned toward her as they were.

"Hey... what are you..." a scientist started, only to stop in shock as there was an audible start up of the technology within the pod. The person before her had just activated the start up sequence.

The person who kicked this off, just turned away and walked out the door, and Lideya took a moment to come out of shock, before she chased after the person.

She saw the flowing robes round a corner as she left, and she double-timed after it, and then fell in shock as she saw the being fade in a bright blue light.

-MD-

2187.

A bright blue light faded away, to reveal the cowled figure from the planet stood in the middle of the platform at the rear of the room.

A Hologram turned toward the figure, as did a human red-headed woman.

"Well?" Asked the woman.

"He'll be out of it on schedule." The figure said, and pulled back the hood to reveal avian-like features, but without the feathers, nor the beak. Just angular, single-pointed lips, quirked in a smile.

"Good. We've got work to do. EDI, Status of the Temporal Transport modifications?"

EDI, the Hologram, sighed. "I'm afraid that was the last use we had. And I doubt our dimensional cousins will not be willing to part with another."

"And the Dimensional Shift Drive?"

"Burnt out."

Suddenly, a voice came over the internal comms, "Ah, Captain. Not to put a damper on your messing with our past, but I need to put a damper on your messing with our past, since here in our present, we do have some reapers to deal with."

They turned to several display screens around the room, a circular Combat Information Centre. A Reaper fleet was on approach.

A Turian spoke from one spot, "I'm reading five Sovereign-sized Reapers, and a dozen reapers the size of our typical dreadnoughts."

"Fine. Zorra, strap in." The red-head spoke. "EDI. Time to decrypt those files."

-MD-

2175

Lideya sighed as she and the few scientists left watched as the process slowly reversed the stasis. Slowly enough that they had time before the occupant would wake up.

Time to enact containment measures.

And time to realise that it was not an individual from the Jenin Union inside the pod.

Five hours remained before the pod was to open.

And she looked at the Matriarch that oversaw the entire project.

"Human?"

"Yes ma'am."

"But their species hadn't even evolved by then."

"Could the Protheans have done it?"

One of the scientists near the back wall spoke up, "No. The pod's records show that it lost power after a 100 years. Or 110 human years. It recorded it's last known position without this system prior to failure, and tracking it's trajectory confirms that it lost power while on approach, some years ago."

Another Asari spoke up, "I've got the calculations for the dates... it would indicate that the pod activated and put the human in stasis in the earth year 2010."

Looks where shared.

"Doesn't that mean that we began tracking it by earth year 2070?"

"2071." Called the person that had performed the calculations.

Someone decided it needed said. "But their home systems' relay was not active until 2149. I believe it was at the centre of a large mass of ice until their prothean data cache made them aware of the relay."

"There's more." Shared the scientist that had mentioned the pod's records. "It tracked its location periodically, and at some point it somehow travelled to our system from over 15,000 light years away."

They stared at her, and she added. "Through time. The star charts onboard show the galaxy as it would have been hundreds of thousands of years ago. And that's at the latest. Possibly much earlier. And well before his species actually advanced much."

They all stared at the pod that contained many mysteries.

-MD-

Inside the pod.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep. Beep.

Beep. Beep.

Just another five minutes mum.

Beep beep. Beep beep.

I shift a little. I want to sleep a bit more, but there's that incessant beeping.

Beep beep beep beep. Beep beep beep beep.

Then it hits. A rush of images. Aliens. Explosions. Experiments...

Then seeing a ship go up in flames as I was jettisoned from it into space.

The sensation of drowning, as the pod flooded with some sort of liquid.

Beep beep beep beep. Cuts into my mind.

It's... familiar.

Beep-beep, beep-beep.

I try to open my eyes, but I get the sense that I can't move. Hell, all I can sense is what I'm hearing – that damn, annoying-ass beeping.

"Cryogenic Systems shutting down. Beginning regeneration cycle.

Cryogenic? What the F?

I feel a little, pressure, somewhere. It's odd. I know now that I can't feel my body, whether or not I'm laying down or vertical or anything. Just nothing, except now this odd pressure.

Huh, that's an odd sound.

"Stimulating Nervous system."

Be-beep, Be-beep.

Suddenly, I get the sense I should be twitching... and slowly I realise that I can in fact feel twitching.

And I can feel... cold. Like at my centre I'm freezing cold.

"Stimulating Metabolism. Flushing Cryogenic drugs from system."

And there returns feeling of a sort, still only a little though.

I don't feel so, cold, at my centre, and I realise it's my body warming from renewed activity.

"Ending metabolism stimulation. Ending Nervous system stimulation."

I... shifted a bit more, and this time I felt myself physically move. "Heating cryogenic stability fluid to local ambient levels."

And I found the second of my senses return. Touch. I feel fluid, all around me. And it's warming up.

And with that, my mind starts working more, and I know why it was doing what it was doing.

I was in stasis. Cryogenic stasis, the kind where a person is frozen alive, but without killing them.

Drugs to prevent crystallization within my bodies' cells, thereby preventing the destruction of those cells, now being flushed since they were not needed, and probably reduced my body temperature in the first place.

Stimulating my nervous system, so that my organs could receive normal levels of signals from my brain and brain-stem, thereby waking from artificial hibernation. Metabolic stimulation so that the drugs in my body would break down into non-toxic parts, if they were toxic in the first place. I'll probably need the toilet soon.

And Heating my body only after my core began to rise in temperature as a safety measure against the deadly side effects of hypothermia, aka the bodies' own toxins being driven by the heat to my heart before it can warm up enough to metabolise, regardless of the stimulated metabolism.

And I think of this in the space of only four sets of 'be-beep, be-beep'.

I begin to shiver, as cold is cold now that I can feel it, and the shivers I hope I can blame on that nerve stimulation, what since I thought I felt that I should feel like I was twitching... if that makes sense.

"Flushing cryogenic stability fluid."

That was... curious. And suddenly I didn't feel like I was floating anymore, which only made me aware that I had felt like I was floating.

I felt something solid on my back, and the sense that I'm almost sinking down a bit, but I'm not stood up... so I'm neither vertical, nor horizontal...

I blink as an image of the pod from the outside blinked in my memory for a moment, and blink again when I realise that I just opened my eyes.

It's pitch black.

"Beginning Retinal imaging sensitivity adjustment."

Wha-OWW!

And... I can't close my eyes. My eyes that now show me looking at something bright.

And it's... not hurting? What?

"Retina imaging Sensitivity adjusted."

That's an oddly technical way of saying 'I'm going to make it so your eyes wont hurt from normal light levels when you get out of this damn thing'.

And I realise that it's not pitch black now. There's... a slight light, coming from somewhere.

And now I don't need the sound of the beeps to feel my own heart-beat, as the thought of outside sets in.

'th-thud, th-thud... th-thud, th-thud.'

Okay, I'm awake. Definitely awake.

And I realise that I should be out in a few minutes or so. So. What happened?

I... am not sure. There are images, vague images. But not much.

I pull on them a little, and I get a deluge of information. Both useful and useless.

Who am I?

I'm... Alex... Stephen... Feklar? Oh. Fek'lar, derivative of Fek'lhr, fictional demon/devil in something called Star Trek. So I took the name of a devil? Ah, why doesn't that give me warm and fuzzy feelings?

I pull on it a bit, and I get a bit more detail. Star Trek. TV Show from the 1960s, about a starship named Enterprise, and it's crew. Kirk. Spock. McCoy. Scotty. Uhura. Sulu. Chekov.

Alright.. Fek'lhr...

Devil mentioned in several episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation, the so-called Klingon devil, ruler of Grethor.

Star Trek The Next Generation. TV Show from the 1980-90s about a starship named Enterprise, and its crew. Jean-luc Picard. William T. Riker. Beverley Crusher and son Wesley Crusher. Deanna Troi. Worf, Son of Mogh – a Klingon. Data, android.

I blink, and information rushes at me, along with images of each as I instinctively pull and pull...

So. I know a shit-tonne of stuff about Star Trek. And I still don't know if I'm Alex or Stephen?

Stephen, born 1988...

Okay, that's... me.

Alex?

Virtual Persona of Stephen, Online fiction writer.

Now we're getting somewhere.

And with that, between now and the pod opening, I start, well... pulling.

But unlike with star trek, it's sketchy, as though I did not retain much from that life. I pretty well recognise from tid-bits I wasn't a fan of myself or my life.

-MD-

Some time had passed, but I have no idea how long.

I could have counted the beat of my heart, but then again for some reason I don't have a sense of time anymore to match it to. Maybe it's because, oh, I'm in a near-pitch black escape pod that I barely remember getting into?

After, well... After some time, I finally managed to do more than shift about. A thought occurred to me, _This damn thing is like a minbari bed_. This was, first, because I recognised that I was laid down at an angle, and second, pulling information from my memory has recently hit on Babylon 5, and I had the urge to watch the series for something like the eighth or ninth time. And for some reason I didn't want to watch the fifth season. Something about telepaths being idiots.

I managed to move my arms, and slowly I used my hands to feel around, the pod and myself, because for some reason I remember being naked a short time before I got in the pod, yet I don't think I was naked when I did get in. It's... odd. Details are missing from that situation.

Okay. My skin is very flappy, as though I lost a lot of weight faster than my skin could shrink to match. Arms aren't as badly affected since I never had bulky arms, but my thighs are very much affected. I can actually feel bone and one hand covers just over half it's circumference. Totally different from how it used to be – my thighs were massive. Any weight I put on, most of it went there. But now there's just a lot of skin and an absence of fat.

Yeah, another reason that I think I never liked myself that much.

Not much room to manoeuvre to feel below my thighs. But I am wearing clothes of sorts. Shorts that are very baggy, and when this pod opens, I think I'll need to hold them up, as I can't feel anything elastic at waist level.

Okay, I'm also wearing a thin vest on my top, very loose, exactly how I liked my shirts. No arms on them, just over the shoulders and round the chest. And... Oh thank god. No man-boobs anymore.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

My sister can't tease me for having bigger tits than her now.

...

My sister.

Ah... Crap.

...

Much more slowly, I felt around further up. Okay... hair. A lot of hair.

My beard is matted and long. And wet, given that I'd been suspended in some liquid. That will just have to come off soon as possible.

And I have a tonne of hair on the top of my head too. I, don't know if I like that or not. A few years ago I'd gone for long hair. Had been unmanageable until I'd got to the length I wanted. It was always so thick, so there'd never been much of a manageable in-between.

I felt my face, and I, yeah. Just as gaunt there as elsewhere.

Looks like I'll need to eat a lot of high-fat foods and get my weight up to healthy levels.

On the other hand, I hadn't liked being on the wrong end of the scale of weight-to-fat ratio, or whatever you want to call it.

Thump.

What?

Okay... I think it's time to come out.

...

Nothing?

I wonder... I pushed against the lid a little, and yeah. Silly me, it wouldn't open on its own, that was just the lock releasing.

I pushed again. I know I must have lost some muscle too, that or the lid was just really heavy. I barely got it more than a couple inches before my strength gave out.

Damnit.

I leant forward, and tried again – hard when I've not got much point of leverage and weak muscles.

I got it open a good bit before it crashed back down, enough to see that there were people around the pod.

Doing nothing.

Gee, thanks.

I pushed, but this time managed to get out, "Bloody help me idiots!"

What, I'm stuck in a box for little reason than they won't open it and I can't open it, and I doubt I'll get to see my Nieces and Nephews again. I'm annoyed as hell.

Before I can make one last attempt to open it, someone decided to take pity, or something.

It opened, and light floods in.

I blinked, then again. Too bright. I shaded my eyes with my hands for a moment, blinking rapidly to try to get my eyes to adjust, and seconds later... wow I now have a sense of time... anyway seconds later, I lower my hands... only to feel like I've found the mental version of a BSOD.

"Uh... Hi."

Before me, in what is obviously some sort of lab coat and wearing a see-through helmet that makes me think she's in a bio-hazard suit... is an Asari.

"... Hello." She greeted hesitantly.

I looked around and, yep, more Asari.

"Am I dead?" comes out before my mind-mouth filter kicks in.

"No, you're not." She's curious from why I said that... and again that filter fails to cut in as barely a second later...

"Oh, damn. And here I thought I was surrounded by gorgeous women from heaven."

...

Really? Have I just really said that?

...

Yep.

I closed my eyes and face-palm, and groaned in embarrassment.

"Sorry. Let's try again. Hi..."

"Hello." She greeted again, this time humour in her tone.

"Where am I?" I ask, thankfully mind-mouth filter back in play.

"You are..." She stopped, and I think I know why she would.

I look around, and pointedly say, "Because I don't think I'm on Earth anymore. Although who knows how long I was... asleep for, so this could be Earth and you're our dominatrix mistresses that rule over us with iron fists, to our pleasure."

...

What? Where the hell did that come from?

This time, she does laugh, and I can tell the others are finding this humorous too.

"Damnit. Sorry. My mind-mouth filter is acting up. I think it was the Cryogenic stasis here, and the shock of waking to a sea of beauty."

"You are on the planet Lusia, an Asari colony." She paused, probably realising that it probably was useless information. Well, it normally would. But I recognised her as Asari. That was enough that over the last few minutes, I belatedly realised, I'd been 'pulling' information again.

"... In the Tomaros System." I finish for her with a frown.

"... How?"

Oh, it seems they know something that tells them I shouldn't know.

I decide to bluff a little. "Well, I've seen star charts." True... from a certain point of view. "What's the Earth Year?"

"2175."

...

First.

Woohoo.

And second.

Huh.

"The records from the stasis pod, and our own tracking of it before we recovered it, shows you have been in stasis for 165 Earth years."

...

I immediately saw a flaw. My math has always been good.

I was kidnapped in 2014. 165 years of stasis, should mean it's 2179.

Obviously, someone caught the expression on my face and explained, "The pod you are in, travelled through some kind of space-time phenomenon."

Oh.

... but going back four years?

Then I caught part of that sentence, and I got pulled back to the now. I'm still inside that damn pod.

And my mind chose that moment to declare my bladder was full.

"Ahm... Hey, can someone help me to a toilet, please? I doubt I'd be able to stand..."

Looks where shared, and they nodded.

-MD-

"I am Lideya." Spoke the Asari helping me to the loo.

"And I'm Harry Kim."

Wait.

What?... Oh. Harry Kim. Voyager. Yeah... this shoe fits. I start to chuckle, and Lideya gives me a confused look.

"Sorry... So.. Harry Kim was a character from a bit of fiction, back home. He sort of had a bad run of luck. Abductions, alterations, memory wipes, manipulated by the wrong side, that sort of thing. This just screamed 'Harry Kim' situation to me. I'm Stephen."

"... Stephen...?"

I gave her my last name, and finally we reached the loo. By this point she was carrying me, and placed me on the toilet seat.

Yeah, no such thing as 'male' or 'female' loo's on an Asari colony.

And apparently, no such thing as privacy, either.

I just stared at her, as I went. Huh... She's blushing. And now she's looking away. But she's still stood there.

-MD-

The Next Day.

A looong day has passed. It took me awhile to realise that wasn't just me – it was the planet.

And in that time, the Scientists have been running non-invasive tests on me, and analysing the pod.

Yeah. Looking at it from their point of view, I can see why.

It's not Prothean design.

And none of the current cycle's races even have much need of long-term cryogenic stasis. FTL makes short work of long distance journeys. Mass Relays makes galactic voyages easy. So the people who had been in stasis for those reasons, aka before Mass Relays and/or Element Zero-induced FTL, were found and woken up.

For those who were in stasis for other reasons... as in, Medical ones, science has progressed at this point that most of them were woken up and cured.

The Galaxy literally has no need for long-term stasis.

And. The pod was made a very long time ago. Current estimates put it at between six hundred-thousand, and a million years ago.

Basically, such a long time enough had passed that the star charts that were stored on it – why, I don't know yet but they seem to know already – were no longer accurate, and they used those to determine age. Since, you know. The time-travel vortex that meant I'm about a hundred and ninety-one. Not, well.

The biggest shock to me, I mean aside from the Asari part of the deal when that finally impacted me three hours ago, is that it's like I'm 20 years old, according to the medical tests that check for that sort of thing.

Part of the data in the pod, included partial records of what happened to me aboard that alien ship.

They modified my biology. My DNA. One change I had noted with horror when I went to the toilet. It was only after some of the scans of my body that they discovered that it wasn't so much a... removal... as, well... shifting location.

... No, I'm still clearly a bloke to anyone that looks for the two bumps on neck and crotch.

It's just that the joke older kids like to ask of younger, innocent kids about dropping things has a whole new meaning for me, now.

On the upside, tactically speaking I now no-longer have a weakness.

Yeah. No more going for the nuts.

Lets move on.

Another change I noticed when I went through that scanner (Baring in mind that I let them do all these tests the moment I noticed the absence of my nuts) is my liver was half the size of human baseline, my kidneys, according to the doctors, was the healthiest they'd ever seen, and I now had a redundant heart on my right side.

So that's why my heart makes the sound of four beats. Or hearts.

Now for the downside.

I have little muscles. And I'm on a heavy-gravity world... Or it seems like it. I can't stand up. 1.2g with tiny muscles... yeah. Heavy gravity. I tore my arm muscles trying to open the pod, but my nervous system was, and still is, a bit weird.

I can't stomach food in side-effects from the cryogenic stability fluid that I'd swallowed. The stomach acid that can eat through a human body if the stomach didn't have it's lining... well I got none. It had broken down over those 160 years, and my body was in hibernation so it didn't replace it. So I'm on an IV drip.

And the last one.

The head of the project took me into her care.

No, not Lideya.

Knowing when and where I was, and what was coming, means that I know the significance of this particular Matriarch.

You see...

As Matron-stage Lideya pilots the hover car through the cold skies of Lusia's capital, I'm in the rear passenger seat with a young, Maiden-stage Asari looking after me, and in the front passenger seat is the Matriarch stage Asari that will be seeing to my care and education.

Oh, and in eight years or so she'll be involved in some manner (that was never clear) with the future Rogue Spectre Saren Arterius, who would go on to attack Eden Prime, Feros and make home on Virmire. Oh, and I should mention, he'd try to use the Citadel's secret use as a Mass Relay to bring the Reapers here.

Yeah. It's that Matriarch.

Matriarch Benezia.

...

I'm so screwed.

On the other hand. It is 2175. I'm going to be in long-term care of Matriarch Benezia, and hopefully, now is when she isn't indoctrinated. And... who am I kidding, I doubt I'd be able to stop it. I'd just out myself as someone who knows what's coming.

No, my best bet is to keep my mouth shut, get better, learn stuff, and then somehow get onto the... squad... of the Normandy?

...

This sounds awfully familiar.

Anyway, get onto the squad.

How?

Well, I could join them on the Citadel?... Maybe find Tali and help con..vince... her. Hmm. I'm getting that feeling of the familiar again.

Or Eden Prime.

You know, bring a gun or five, or maybe discover that I'm mysteriously biotic even though I wasn't near element zero as a foetus, and use those abilities to show the commander that I'm good with a gun, and she maybe decides to bring me aboard. But chan...

No.

But can't...

I send another look at Benezia, and then I nod internally to myself.

I'm in a damn Self Insert.

My first instinct was correct. I'm so Screwed.

-MD-

Two Months Later.

"Come on... Just... one... more... lap..." I whisper to myself.

My legs are killing me. My back is killing me. My arms are killing me.

First is because I've been going through the painful stage of physical rehab since, well, since I got here. Even though now I've progressed onto the painful stage of running short distances.

Second is because I've moved up to carrying a backpack with some weight in to mimic having a high body mass and to raise my centre of gravity. Yeah, make it harder on myself.

And third is because I'm also carrying weight in my arms. The last one confused the doctors. I'm not telling them that I'm pretty much turning Physical Rehabilitation into a kind of Military Basic PT course.

I'm doing better than I should, I'd wager. But I don't know how long a human should take to get up to short sprinting from barely able to move.

Modern science helps.

And the heavy gravity.

And that no, I am not a biotic.

I've also discovered a trick that caused a few problems with the doctors once or twice, involving distracting myself from the pain. They've since ensured that I never move around without a full medical sensor package, so they know exactly how I'm doing and whether or not I need to rest. The doctors are biotics, and the moment that I pass the red line, they actually lift me up and put a biotic stasis field over me.

It actually took them three days before they acknowledged that humans typically need to push that envelope to get better. Pain is not the indicator to stop immediately, in this case. It is the indicator that I'm pushing the red line. It's just that I, along with so many other humans before, have difficulty knowing when to stop pushing.

I don't like pain. I'm, well, a wuss, really.

My method to distract myself is precisely why I've stuck with this regime. Or should I say, why I've not just decided to screw it, and try to be a lazy sod.

What do I do?

Well, I've had a couple months of this, and in that time of physical rehab, I've been distracting myself with plans for the future.

As it stands, I have no idea if I'm going to actually try to join Shepards' crew.

But I am going to do my damndest to fight the reapers. I'll have to in about ten or eleven years.

I have a plan.

It is, big. Massive, even. Unlikely to work, so very high-risk.

But since when is anything worthy not high-risk with the odds against it?

And given my gaming habits before the abduction... oh so very me.

As it stands, it's not much clear on the first few years. I have no clear-cut plan for that, really. I still need to acclimatise myself. Which, yeah, is also so very me.

Basics of the plan is this. Invest in companies I know will do well in the next few years. Build up some support, which is the biggest problem I can see for the immediate future. Get out into the galaxy. Make connections. And try to do so unnoticed by either Shadow Broker, Collectors, Saren, Benezia and Cerberus.

See? High-risk and unlikely to work.

The obvious point that will hold me back first, is education. I have no idea how to use this technology. My information is restricted to what was in the games, novels, comics and reference books. This is reality. Just because I know there'll be visits to Therum, Feros, Noveria, Virmire and Ilos, doesn't mean that I know the timeline, nor order of those. Hell, the only reason I can think of that Saren attacked the Citadel immediately after Ilos, was because Shepard was on his ass. Yet in the game, he had a good head start, from the beginning. He didn't need Liara to know to head to Ilos. He got the location of the Mu relay from the Rachni queen, and the cipher to understand the data in the beacon from the Thorian. But even when the player did every single side mission possible between missions...

No. I don't know how his search went, nor the order for that.

Which is where my high-risk high-reward plan will come into play. I can do something to delay it. Or it could accelerate it.

Damnit.

Back to my education. I never was for science, or history, or geography, or... well, one of the things I was ever good at was writing, and even then not very good. Not enough for original writing, at least.

What I was really good at, was pattern recognition. Even when it came to TV Shows that were written on the fly, like Alias, I could tell possible twists a long way off. Like the last season of that show, when it was in production and I only knew of one name, 'Prophet 5', and that Vaughn was investigating...

I pretty much put all the puzzle pieces together, and the only surprising thing about the end of the series was that Sydney's kid didn't end up an orphan at the very end of the episode.

I can't just leave my knowledge of events from the games and other fiction as my only reference points. I need to learn, and that involves the technology.

The strongest part of me, right now, is my brain.

And even when I can match an Alliance Marine for physical training, (that's what I'm aiming for on that side) my strongest skills will still lay in my mind.

And if there's one thing that Pattern Recognition can help me to do, is to cheat.

Oh, yeah. I like to cheat.

That's why my big plan is so very me.

And... OW!

Oh... fuck fuck fuck...

Last thing I see, before I hit the deck in a roll that knocks me unconscious, is the displeased looks on my doctors' faces.


End file.
